It is conventional to pump or blow loose fill fibrous insulation into attics, walls, etc. of houses and other buildings. It is also known to add a binder, de-dusting oil, anti-static agent and/or fungicide to small pieces of fiberglass, mineral wool or other fibrous insulation in or near a blowing nozzle to prevent settling, sparking and mold or to reduce dust in the area of the installation during installation. Such technology can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,710,4804, 4,804,695, but as stated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,952,418, these systems suffer from problems of blockage of adhesive nozzles and/or a blowing hose. Further, these systems require a moisture content in the preinstalled product that is so high that the insulation requires a long drying time, two or more days, of the wall cavity installations before wall board can be installed if potential mold problems, such as in the paper facing of the wall board are to be avoided.
Cellulose loose fill insulation is also sprayed into wall cavities, but to make the insulation stay in the cavity and not fall out, it is necessary to penetrate it with water such that as much as 2-3 pounds or more of water exists in the insulation as installed in a standard eight foot high wall cavity formed by the standard construction of 8 foot, 2″×4″ inch studs on 16 inch centers. Such an installation takes days to dry sufficiently to install wallboard. It is known to add a powder adhesive to the cellulose insulation prior to injecting water into the blow to reduce the amount of water needed to get the cellulose to stick to the wall of the cavity as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,773,960, but the just installed insulation still contains much more than 15 percent water.
It is also known to spray clumps of fiber glass insulation coated with water and a non-foaming binder into wall cavities followed by rolling at least about an inch of excess insulation thickness down to the thickness of the wall studs followed by spraying additional clumps of insulation into any thin spots or unfilled cavities and apparently again rolling excess thickness down to the thickness of the studs. As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,641,368, the installed insulation is reported to have a moisture content of less than about 35 wt. percent and moisture contents of less than 10 percent are disclosed for some examples, but it is unclear how long after installation the samples were removed for testing. When using lower moisture content, the clumps do not stick well to certain conventional linings of wall cavities and the rolled insulation tends to spring back in some areas. Also, the additional step of spraying a second time slows the building installation process. Nozzles for spraying water on or an aqueous binder onto clumps of insulation while the latter are inside the nozzle are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,923,121 and 5,921,055, but these nozzles from liquid and binder striking the inside walls of the nozzle causing fiber and particles to build up on the inside of the nozzle.
A nozzle for coating clumps of insulation after they exit the nozzle is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,187,983, but this nozzle is extremely complex requiring many costly machined parts, compressed air and two sets of jet atomizers, and the angle of the jets cannot be changed.
With concerns of mold problems in walls of various kinds of structures reaching serious levels, and installed lowest installed costs being important to commercial success, a loose fill insulation, particularly an inorganic fiber insulation, that contains a low moisture content or substantially no moisture just after installation and that will dry more rapidly to a level suitable for installing wall board is greatly needed to reduce costs of construction and to reduce the potential for mold problems. The present invention addresses these needs of a more effective nozzle and a method of using the nozzle to produce a superior and less costly just-installed insulation product.